This was the first classic Mega Man game I ever played as a kid, since it was the only one ported to GBA. I only wanted to play as Bass, but I struggled to actually beat any bosses as him because they tend to have lengthy invulnerability periods after getting hit by only a single one of his rapid fire buster shots, so I mostly just played the opening stage and the first three Robot Master stages over and over again on the school bus or car rides. (I did eventually get to the later stages of the game in middle school, though I don't think I ever beat King's castle.) As such I'll always be extremely nostalgic for this version and its crunchy soundtrack, even if the logical part of my brain knows it's the inferior version of what's already a pretty mid-tier Mega Man game.

Honestly? Not a huge fan of Zero Mission. It's definitely cool for what it is, but it really does hold your hand too much and the bosses are WAY too easy. And, yes, it's cool that the devs included so many intentional speedrunning shortcuts and skips for repeat playthroughs (where the heavy guidance is irrelevant because you already know where to go anyway), but that doesn't necessarily make a one-off casual playthrough more interesting. It kinda kills the atmosphere of the previous games, too, by leaning more into a heroic action-adventure vibe. Again, not bad by any means, but far from my favorite Metroid.

I was OBSESSED with this game in middle school. As much as I love the new classic series entries we've gotten since this one, it's so hard for them to stack up to the sheer amount of STUFF in this game. On top of being a really solid remake of Mega Man 1 with a cute art style and an expanded story, you can also play as EVERY ROBOT MASTER, AND multiple variants of Mega Man, AND Roll with a bunch of free DLC costumes, and even Proto Man?? And there's a challenge mode to put all those characters' skills to the test? AND there's a stage editor, which I poured a bunch of time into making bad levels in? It rules. I'm perpetually sad that we never got a Powered Up version of Mega Man 2.

On the one hand, this is maybe the worst RPG I've ever played, a game ostensibly made for kids that's also incredibly cruel to the player at every turn. Every resource from MP and items to XP and money is too scarce and too tightly controlled so that you can't lessen the difficulty curve by grinding - and even if you do manage to gain an extra level or two, the enemies will just scale up. The repetitive battles quickly become gruelingly long and can easily spiral out of control if you make any mistakes. Missed inputs on the insufferable Elite Beat Agents QTEs are punished way too severely. And attacks randomly miss all the fucking time, particularly early on, because for some incomprehensible reason the "attack" and "defense" stats in what was pitched as the Sonic equivalent of the beginner-friendly Mario RPGs are actually secretly tabletop-style hit and dodge stats. It's completely miserable to play. The hand drawn backgrounds are kinda nice, at least, but they also mean that the world has to be incredibly small with few areas to explore, making the adventure feel uneventful. And, of course, the literally unfinished soundtrack is just the icing on the cake.

On the other hand, my fursona is now immortalized in the IDW comics with the army of duplicate "unique" Chao I save scummed for on stream so that I didn't have to do the QTEs for the special moves anymore. So who's to say if it's good or bad

Had a fun time with this one! It definitely shows its age in some areas, and the gameplay gets a little repetitive, and it’s a little too fond of hinging its story on blatant Twin Peaks allusions, but the good outweighs the bad. Alan remains a unique video game protagonist as a kinda trashy airport thriller novelist thrust into supernatural circumstances, and the use of the manuscript pages as a storytelling device is really interesting. The story is sincerely engaging, but it’s also full of campy moments that made me smile. I can see why it’s a cult classic.

Yeah, I just dropped this one after like an hour, even though this game is only like four hours long or something. This is just not at all what I want out of this series. There’s barely any story here, and what IS there is somehow both very thin and needlessly convoluted. Feels like they wanted to rebrand Alan Wake as more of an action series to broaden the appeal while also throwing out a low-budget, what-if, ambiguously canon potential ending for Alan’s story, in case they never made a sequel. I just went and skimmed the rest of the cutscenes on YouTube for context before moving on to Control.

Like basically all of the other mainline numbered FF entries, I’ve started this one multiple times, but never managed to finish it. Something else would always come up and distract me, or I’d get out of Midgar and decide I’d had my fill. But with Rebirth on the way, I decided it was time to finally sit down and play it start to finish. And man, what an all timer.

It’s still clunky in places, sure. Some haphazard minigames, prerendered backgrounds that can be hard to parse, a stilted English translation that really really needs an update. But it’s still so damn fun, and made with so much passion to try out new things and experiment with interactive storytelling. It’s not quite my favorite FF gameplay-wise, but it may still be my favorite in terms of story. I’ll always cherish these characters and the world they live in.